The week in channel-land: New deals, channel reappearances and revenue tumbles
The weather outside may have been frightful this week, but that didn't stop the Kiwi channel, with disties signing up new deals, vendors rolling out new offerings for partners and channel bosses popping up in new roles.
Tech Data and Westcon-Comstor were appointed APAC distributors for data migration software provider Datadobi, while DNA Connect added PacketLight optical networking to its connectivity portfolio in a deal the distie says will help partners address customers' need to improve the speed and capacity of fibre infrastructure at an affordable cost.
Also signing a new deal was Multimedia Technology, which was appointed master distributor for NVIDIA Quadro across Australia and New Zelaand in a deal the vendor says is a sign of its commitment to provide continued focus on the local market.
In a quiet week for appointment news, Belinda Jurisic – whose departure from Citrix was only announced last month – reappeared in a key channel role, this time heading up channel sales for Veeam as the vendor looks to grow its enterprise base.
Meanwhile, Epson New Zealand's Simon Rogers gave us the low-down on where Kiwi resellers can find growth in the corporate projector market – despite it being a generally flat market, while IDC was urging enterprises of all kinds to get their skates on when it comes to cognitive and AI systems, which are becoming 'a key part of IT infrastructure' according to the analyst firm.
Spark was holding firm on its attempted acquisition of Team Talk, saying its 80 cents per share offer was the full and final offer and that if Vodafone's bid to buy 70% of the Farmside subsidiary is accepted the Spark deal is off thanks to conditions of its offer which will be breached by any Vodafone deal.
Meanwhile, newly released financial results showed Dimension Data's Kiwi operations recorded a widening loss – at $8 million – on decreased revenue for last financial year, while Hewlett-Packard New Zealand managed to turn things around to record a $10 million profit – despite seeing its revenue nearly cut in half.
Lenovo hit the channel news not once, but twice, launching a new data center partner program for the ANZ market, and a PC-as-a-service offering for New Zealand.
Also launching a partner program locally was SonicWall which debuted its SecureFirst Partner Program for the local market, and took the wraps off new marketing and training features.
There was plenty of news for New Zealand's managed service providers, with BitTitan expanding its MSPComplete platform in a move it says empowers partners to increase revenue and reduce service delivery costs and ManageEngine integrating its flagship managed service provider (MSP) offering, with ServiceDesk Plus MSP fused with ManageEngine's sales and finance apps.
Globally, DXC Technology, created by the merger of CSC and HPE's Enterprise Services business, began trading on the New York Stock Exchange, publicly debuting as a 'global end-to-end IT services company', while closer to home, Atlas Gentech's Simply Leasing relaunched itself, with plans to aggressively pursue increased market share in the coming months.
And as the working week draws to a close, take a look at our photo gallery courtesy of Dicker Data and the lucky winners of its Walk the Walk Milford Track promotion who enjoyed four days hiking the Milford Track last week while still enjoying three course meals, fresh linen and hot showers each night. Getaway time, anyone?
